


Deliverance

by tomfoolery14



Series: SH Tarot Fic [1]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Angst, Healing, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Magic, Much needed closure for Magnus, Or at least a start, Post-Canon, Psychological Trauma, Self-Acceptance, Self-Reflection, overcoming the past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:47:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23149501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomfoolery14/pseuds/tomfoolery14
Summary: With the return of his magic, amidst the overwhelming relief and pleasantly familiar burn in his blood, was a metaphorical sense of whiplash: losing almost his entire sense of self and identity only to have it thrust back into his hands twice, having the safety net of his lover who kept him from completely drowning ripped away then returned… The resolutions were what he needed, but instability was the thematic undercurrent of every one. There were things he had to let go of, things he didn’t know how to let go of.SH Tarot week 2 - Death
Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Series: SH Tarot Fic [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1664068
Comments: 14
Kudos: 39
Collections: Favorite Malec Stories, Fluff vs. Angst Battle 2020, Shadowhunters Tarot Challenge





	Deliverance

**Author's Note:**

> Death can be a terrifying card to receive but very rarely does it signify the physical death of a loved one. While this card does symbolize transformation and rebirth, that growth can only come from the loss and death of something else. That can be a painful process whether it’s the end of a job, a relationship, or even a part of ourselves. 
> 
> Death is an inevitable part of the cycle of life, and in that, we can take some comfort. Whatever we lose isn’t meant to live any longer. It has come to the natural end of its cycle, and there is a rightness in that.
> 
> When this card appears, make sure you have support. Take care of yourselves. The dying is going to hurt. It’s going to suck. But you will come out the other end with the space to grow into something better.

After Asmodeus took his magic, Magnus had routinely prayed every single day.

He had always taken his faith seriously, ever since he was a child and his mother gifted him his first strand of mala beads, but through the ebbs and flows of his life, the way he practiced changed too. During the times where he hovered a bit too close to the edge of invincible, he prayed less frequently, perhaps even with less sincerity, and found himself forgetting his mala more often. In times of great distress, he prayed vigorously, numerous times a day on his knees for hours at a time.

But at a depth of darkness he couldn’t recall having been before, it was one of the few rituals he still had left unchanged. Everything in his life had to change when he did, it seemed. This was one of the precious few and far between that hadn’t. He could spend the day on his knees praying for deliverance from the pain whether or not he had magic. 

With the return of his magic, amidst the overwhelming relief and pleasantly familiar burn in his blood, was a metaphorical sense of whiplash: losing almost his entire sense of self and identity only to have it thrust back into his hands twice, having the safety net of his lover who kept him from completely drowning ripped away then returned… The resolutions were what he needed, but instability was the thematic undercurrent of every one.

There were things he had to let go of, things he didn’t know _how_ to let go of. But that was what faith was for.

Magnus awoke just after sunrise, carefully extricating himself from the bed sheets after a soft kiss to his husband’s temple, and took his mala beads from the bedside table along with his yoga mat. A flick of his fingers sent the balcony doors opening as he held a small cup of tea he had summoned. The concrete outside was still cold, even the patches the sun had begun to reach, so he picked the sunniest part to unroll his mat onto. He rolled his head a few rotations, stretching the sore muscles, and knelt down with his feet tucked underneath him.

Greying mala beads made of old sandalwood shifted in his hands. He had preserved them meticulously all these centuries, and they still smelled just like he remembered when his mother gifted them to him. For a minute he just held the beads to his mouth and breathed in deep, eyes closed reverently.

Starting with the bead just to the right of the sumeru, Magnus quietly uttered his mantra and rolled the bead between his thumb and forefinger. One hundred and eight beads to reinforce it, many more rounds to believe it with all his being. Each repetition made him think of all that he was trying to leave in the past, the person he was going to bury for good.

The alcohol addiction. The cigarettes. The scars he would press his fingers into. The glamour specifically designed to hide more than just his real eyes. The letters from Camille that were still hidden in the basement of a property he owned in Belarus. The sick feelings of pride he could remember feeling as a young boy when he made Asmodeus proud. The hollowed out feeling inside him when his magic was taken from him. The name he couldn’t deserve without it. The disgust with his being.

For a long time, growth meant locking away the past and hiding it away until he could tell himself he had moved on. Omission was the best healing he could give himself—that’s what he had chosen to believe.

Asmodeus had forced his hand to the point of no return, though; lying to himself was a luxury he could no longer afford. He never wanted to feel as inadequate as he did when he was living without his magic ever again.

Then came the final insult—Alec breaking his heart in one its most intimate ways. They had reconciled in Alicante with a pledge to be true, and Alec had come for him in Edom with the kind of love that made Magnus’ heart ache. But there was more to forgiveness than what he could give right now.

“ _Saya ingin melepaskan_ ,” he whispered when his fingers returned to the sumeru. “ _Saya harus melepaskannya_.” Letting his eyes slowly open, Magnus exhaled and got to his feet. The remaining dregs of his tea had grown cold, but he downed it in one swallow. His mala beads swung loosely from where part of the strand spilled out of his robe pocket.

It was still very early, and yet there was no way he could go back to bed. Besides, Alec had had a long night covering a patrol shift and needed uninterrupted sleep. Instead, he went to the apothecary. It was still in disarray from moving back in all over again, numerous containers of various sizes scattered about and tomes not yet in their proper places. Clearing his belongings out for Lorenzo was quite an undertaking without his magic, but he found himself enjoying the opportunity to restock by hand. It made him feel like he was settling back into the life where he belonged.

He sat down to start sorting more things but his attention was diverted to a glass orb carefully set on the top shelf of the bookcase opposite him. He had had it for a few centuries now, carefully protected in his warded safe almost every second, but with the loft still undergoing reconstruction on the finer details that had been pettily scrubbed out by Lorenzo, the next safest place was the apothecary. Early on, Magnus had learned that magic and emotion were too intricately intertwined for there not to be consequences of feeling too passionately, so he had devised a safe way to contain the volatile outbursts. Swirling orange ribbon-like strands of magic moved around and within one another in serpentine patterns inside the orb, never stopping or slowing. Left to its own devices, the uninhibited magic could cause extreme destruction and chaos, so he created a new and unprecedented method of containment. His greatest despairs in their most unadulterated form were contained in it and tethered to him for eternity—or as long as it existed.

Striding across the room to the shelf and carefully taking the glass orb down from its stand, he rolled it around in his palm thoughtfully. He knew what had to be done.

Closing the apothecary door behind him, Magnus flicked his wrist and clothed himself in a loose burgundy tunic, slim fitting black slacks, and comfortably-worn leather boots, with his mala beads secured on his wrist with three loops plus a final loop around his middle finger. He adjusted the strap of his satchel against his shoulder and was just about to summon a portal when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye.

“Baby? What’s going on?” Alec asked sleepily, holding himself up by leaning against the bedroom doorjamb. His hair was soft and mussed, his shirt hiked up on the left side from his restless sleep showed little finger-shaped bruises on the softness of his hip, and his eyes were slightly squinted against the light filtering in.

Magnus’ hands fell to his sides as he walked over to his half-awake husband, giving him a soft kiss on the forehead. “I have somewhere I have to go for a little bit. I’ll be back before you wake up again.” He started to turn away but a hand on his wrist stopped him.

“Wait. Are you okay?” Alec’s eyebrows were furrowed, creating a dramatic crease on his forehead that Magnus immediately moved to smooth away with his thumb.

I will share with you my truest feelings, and when you speak, I will listen.

“There’s something I have to take care of. Something that’s been holding me back for a long time. I just didn’t realize until now.” Reaching into his satchel, Magnus revealed the glass orb to him. “Sometimes a warlock’s magic and emotions are too tightly interwoven, causing outbursts of extremely dangerous magic. I created a spell that would contain them, but it’s connected to me, and I feel like they’re still growing inside me. I need to let go of what my father did to me, what he took from me. And I—” He swallowed the lump growing in his throat. “And I have to let go of the things I feel about your arrangement with my father.”

Alec blinked, then looked down as he reached for Magnus’ free hand. “I understand.”

“Do you?”

“I know that I hurt you, Magnus. I was in agony but I know it’s not comparable to what you went through—what I put you through. I love you more than I can say, and I knew that nothing that I could do would take away your pain. You needed—”

“I needed you, Alexander,” Magnus interrupted. “I was in agony and I needed someone to stand by me. You took away my choice because you thought you knew better, and that’s something that I don’t know how to let go of. I love you, and I know that I’m meant to be with you, but I also know that what we’ve been through changes us. We can become stronger, but we’re not the same.”

The smile Alec managed was faint but genuine. “We always seem to find our way back to each other.”

“I’m all for effort,” Magnus replied, pressing forward just enough to brush their noses together tenderly. The question was never if they were forever broken, but rather how would they mend. What they had was inevitable, a foregone conclusion. His fingers trailed down Alec’s left side and pressed gently into the bruises his fingers had left two nights ago.

Alec laughed against Magnus’ lips as he kissed him. He was soft and warm, and smelled of sandalwood and spearmint—smelled of Magnus. That spark of something extraordinary was just as vibrant now as it was with their first kiss. “Be safe.”

After a lingering caress to Alec’s cheek, Magnus turned his back to him and opened a portal with a fluid flick of his wrist. Little sparks lingered on his fingers for a second or two after he landed on the rough gravel of Cairo.

He had a property here where he kept some of his more obscure necessities of both the valuable and dangerous nature. If he was going to attempt to bind and destroy this temperamental magic, he would need privacy and reinforcement. Passing through his extensive warding, using his magic signature like a lock on a door, he stepped inside the double doors with a sigh. It looked just the same as he left it, perfectly maintained marble and onyx flooring and walls with floating candles up against the walls. A winding staircase led to the lower floor where his expanded apothecary and ritual space were, and he took the steps two at a time on the way down.

Gathering some herbs, oils, and chalk from the apothecary, he began to organize his binding spell. First, he drew the sigil on the floor, twice the size of the glass object itself, then he began to ration out the ingredients and carefully combine them in the cauldron on the table to let stew for a few minutes.

His fingers found their way to the mala on his wrist and he began murmuring his mantra while he rolled each bead in fast, familiar motions. “ _Sembuhkan pikiran, tubuh, dan jiwa saya. Saya perlu mengingat siapa saya dan di mana saya berada dalam iman saya_ ,” he concluded.

Magnus meticulously retraced the lines of the sigil on the floor with the potion, then lowered the top of his tunic slightly to drawn the accompanying symbol on the hollow at the base of his throat. He immediately felt a faint burning sensation under his skin where he was marked, and he gritted his teeth against it.

The glass orb was growing hot to the touch as the magic contained within it began to glow a darker orange. Carefully setting it in the center of the sigil, Magnus stepped back outside the line and sent a dense pulse of energy at it. The glass splintered into a thousand shards, allowing the flames of magic to grow upwards and expand only to be abruptly halted by the containment spell.

As Magnus looked at it, it felt like looking at an amputated limb; he could live without it, be healthier without it, but it seemed wrong somehow to be parted from it. A faint whispering started to echo off the walls and close in on him, words of guilt and shame and anger that made his skin crawl. They were words he had formed at one time or another, back to haunt and torment him.

He had to let them go.

With a cry that wrenched itself painfully from his chest, he threw both arms out in front of him, a blaze of red billowing from his palms. The serpentine motions of the tendrils grew faster and more chaotic, and the blaze began burning brighter. The second the two forces collided, Magnus felt it in his own body; the agony of destroying a piece of himself felt like lighting his blood on fire to burn through his whole body. For a moment, his breathing hitched and stopped from the sheer shock of the pain, but he somehow managed to hold himself up.

The tendrils started to turn a darker shade of red, patches of it turning black as the assault from Magnus’ offense mercilessly tried to infiltrate and destroy.

Exhaustion made Magnus sway a bit on his feet. He was fighting both fronts of the battle, receiving a feedback loop of aching; the lightning in his blood was like electric currents that never stopped, and he felt like he was starting to tear at the seams. If he even attempted shifting his stance in the slightest, he knew that all the resolve he had would dissolve. The marking on his skin flared hotter, before suddenly feeling more like the white-hot burn of something extremely cold simultaneously aching and numb.

The past had been a weight he could force himself to carry for a long time, but what had happened in the last few weeks was different. He would rot from the inside out if he let them stay and grow into something so much uglier.

Help me release. I can never be free of the pain if I keep the past tied to me.

With a loud roar of defiance, Magnus let go of every restraint he used to hold himself back and redoubled the strength he put into his magic. What came from his raw palms had turned a vibrant shade of crimson. It was like watching an infection spread through the pathways of a body; little vein-like black lines started to overrun the opposing magic source. Bit by bit it started crumbling until it was nothing but dust, swept away by his own power.

The ache in his chest was still prominent and the electricity under his skin still sparked, but there was also a feeling that he was free from something that had been holding him back. It was never the end, but the pain of holding onto each betrayal and heartbreak and resentment was something he could put to death. Simplifying himself for the comfort of others by finding a way to make his passion harm him rather than potentially damage others was something he couldn’t do any longer. The scars inside had shone through to the outside long ago, and it was time he stop punishing himself for it.

“Fuck you,” he murmured to no one, using the back of his hand to wipe away the tacky trail of blood from his nose to his upper lip.

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on [tumblr](http://royaltybane.tumblr.com)


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